The New Zealand Site

The DoC visitors’ centre is located at the northern end of Lake Rotoiti in the village of St Arnaud. From here you can also get shuttle services to the track entrances and skifields, and the water taxi. You’ll also find a shop, campgrounds and accommodation.

Bad weather, Robert

On Christmas Eve, with a reasonable weather forecast, we tramped up Robert Ridge to Lake Angelus (elevation 1600 m). At first we were sweating from the steep climb and the hot sun, but near the bushline clouds blew in and on the ridge we were blasted by horizontal rain. Within an hour we’d gone from sweating in shorts to wearing full layers of polypro, polarfleece and wet weather gear and wishing we’d brought our gloves!

View from Robert

When the clouds lifted we had stunning views over the surrounding ranges and peaks. Other highlights were watching cloud shadows blow across rippling tussock and the many excellent vegetable sheep on the route.

The Lake Angelus hut was full that night (around 40 people) and deservedly so as it’s a good hut in an utterly beautiful location.

Hukere Valley, Cascade Track

The next day we went down Hukere Stream on the Cascade track, through fields of mountain daisies and buttercups to a sudden, near-vertical descent to the idyllic valley floor, where we meandered down through increasingly large beech trees to the Travers valley and on to the Lakehead hut. The day’s descent inspired us to get walking poles and I would strongly recommend them for this route to save your knees from getting trashed.

Kea

There were kea (mountain parrot, pictured) and karearea (NZ native falcon) by the hut, and inside - guides preparing a surprise Christmas dinner for a tour group. The only drawback to the lower altitude was the clouds of sandflies which avidly followed our every move. Even bug repellent didn’t stop them from idiotically flying into eyeballs or nostrils! They were misnamed by Captain Cook’s men and are actually a kind of blackfly. The Maori call them Namu and tradition holds that that they were a cruel gift from the Goddess of Death to remind people of their mortality.

Lake View

The walk back along the lake to St Arnaud is easy and beautiful. The track is flat and very well formed with many superb views across the lake and back up to the ranges. Near St Arnaud the track passes through an intensively predator-controlled area where stoats, rats and possums are trapped and wasp nests eradicated. In this area the vegetation is more luxuriant and there is a much higher density of birdlife because of the availability of food sources and the lower rate of predation. The increase in birdsong (compared to forest outside the area) is noticeable and there was even some mistletoe flowering profusely on the track.

A great tramp with stunning scenery, good huts and some challenging sections.

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